"Frontiersman" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the Shenandoah and the Commonwealths lying westward and to the south, came the men and women whose early homes were near the banks of the little streams and nestled in the shades of the majestic groves. Here they suffered the hardships and endured the privations that only the frontiersman might know. Here beneath humble roofs, their children were born and reared, and here from hearts that knew no guile ascended the incense of thanksgiving and praise. The early settlers, the pioneers, the ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... has its own way of constructing its lodges, encamping, making fires, its own style of dress, by some of which peculiarities the experienced frontiersman can generally distinguish them. ...
— The Prairie Traveler - A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions • Randolph Marcy
... pioneer days are gone with their roughness and their hardship, their incredible toil and their wild, half-savage romance. But the need for the pioneer virtues remains the same as ever. The peculiar frontier conditions have vanished; but the manliness and stalwart hardihood of the frontiersman can be given even freer scope under the conditions surrounding the complex industrialism of ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... of Hawkeye, Pathfinder and Deerslayer. Leather-Stocking appears in five of Cooper's books, which are commonly and collectively known as "the Leather-Stocking Tales." He has generally been accepted as a type of the hardy frontiersman who, in the years following ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... the Province, found the foppery of the aging man slightly ridiculous; yet he was aware that Mr. Winscombe's essential character had no expression in his satin and powder; his will was as rugged and virile as that of any adventuring frontiersman clad in untanned hides. He was, Howat decided, at little disadvantage with his young wife. He wondered if any deep bond bound the two. Their personal feelings were carefully concealed, and in this they resembled Isabel Howat, ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... clerk—and the fact is mentioned merely as illustrating a universal custom among the pioneers—"John Cameron always kept a barrel of whiskey in the house." He was a powerful man physically, and a typical frontiersman. He was born in Kentucky in 1791, and, with his wife, moved to Illinois in 1815. He settled in Sangamon County in 1818, and in 1829 took up his abode in a cabin on a hill overlooking the Sangamon River, and, with James Rutledge, founded the town of ...
— McClure's Magazine, Volume VI, No. 3. February 1896 • Various
... the Sagamore and the colonel. You shall then hear the whoop from that quarter; with this wind one may easily send it a mile. Then, Uncas, do you drive in the front; when they come within range of our pieces, we will give them a blow that, I pledge the good name of an old frontiersman, shall make their line bend like an ashen bow. After which, we will carry the village, and take the woman from the cave; when the affair may be finished with the tribe, according to a white man's battle, by a blow and a victory; or, in the Indian fashion, ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... seemed a sombre and lonely place, and the hills with their whispering trees looked menacingly down upon the clearing, the cabin, and the five simple English folk. The glory of the day was gone. After a little more of idle staring, the frontiersman and his son returned to their work in the forest, while Alce and Molly went indoors to their spinning, and Audrey sat down upon the doorstep to listen to the hurry of voices in the trees, and to watch the ever-deepening shadow of the cloud ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... of the little party hastening toward him—three young girls and a brace of subalterns—he read question and cross-question, and was thankful to see Hay, the trader, trudging up the walk to join him. So seldom did the old frontiersman enter the quadrangle that people remarked upon his coming;—remarked still more when Webb hurried down to ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... ago, the deep shadows of the untrimmed wilderness overspread the broad valleys and wild hills of western New-York. The sound of the squatter's axe had not then aroused the echoes of those remote solitudes; nor the smoke of the frontiersman's cabin curled above the tall branching oaks and the solemn hemlocks of the primeval forest. The ploughshare had not then turned the fertile glebe, nor the cattle browsed upon the tender herbage of that region, now so populous and cultivated. The red stag there shook his branching antlers, and ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... and British seamen on the Atlantic was small, but on the lakes what little there was disappeared. A New Englander and an Old Englander differed little enough, but they differed more than a frontiersman born north of the line did from one born south of it. These last two resembled one another more nearly than either did the parent. There had been no long-established naval school on the lakes, and the British sailors that came up there were the best of their kind; so ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... neighbors were bands of roving freebooters, who robbed all who came in their way. They did not, however, content themselves with waylaying solitary travelers. They frequently made organized attacks upon remote farm-houses, and one night they made a sudden descent upon Mr. Winters's rancho. But the old frontiersman had lived too long in that country, and was too well acquainted with the character of his neighbors, to be caught napping. He and his Rancheros were armed to the teeth, and prepared for a fight; and, after a siege of two days, during which time the robbers ...
— Frank Among The Rancheros • Harry Castlemon
... interested in life itself rather than in its reconstruction or reformation. The Negro is, by natural disposition, neither an intellectual nor an idealist, like the Jew; nor a brooding introspective, like the East Indian; nor a pioneer and frontiersman, like the Anglo-Saxon. He is primarily an artist, loving life for its own sake. His metier is expression rather than action. He is, so to speak, the lady ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... camping on the Great Divide, our "roof of the world," where in the space of a few feet you may see two springs, one sending its water to the Polar solitudes, the other to the eternal Carib summer. One morning at sunrise as we were breaking camp, I was startled to hear one of our party, a frontiersman born, intoning these ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... small parties over a narrow front and the tactics those of the frontiersman, who never wants in individual initiative and groundcraft. Behind their lines the Canadians rehearsed in careful detail again and again till each man was letter perfect in the part that he was to play in the "little surprise being planned in Canada for Brother Boche." The ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... in the name of great causes and that villains stalked where only saints should have trod. The irregular warfare of the border, from fifty-four on, while it may, to military history as a whole, be as unimportant as the quarrels of kites and crows, was yet a big part of the life of the frontiersman and frightful in its possibilities. Sherman's march to the sea or through the Carolinas, disgraceful to modern civilization as each undeniably was, lacked the sickening phase, guerrilla atrocities, that made the Civil War in the West, to those at least who were in line to experience ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... what you'd call an agreeable subject," he answered, with the sinister humor of the frontiersman who has learned to make ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... attempt to mislead. Some of his biographers, however, while shunning direct false statements, have used alleviating adjectives with literary skill, and have drawn fanciful pictures of a pious frugal household, of a gallant frontiersman endowed with a long catalogue of noble qualities, and of a mother like a Madonna in the wilderness.[17] Yet all the evidence that there is goes to show that this romantic coloring is purely illusive. Rough, coarse, low, ignorant, and poverty-stricken surroundings were about the child; and ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... . Its perusal" (that of my second volume) "has recalled an incident which may interest you. Twelve or thirteen years ago I crossed the Sierra Nevada mountains as a Government surveyor under a famous frontiersman and civil engineer—Colonel Lander. We were too early by a month, and became snow-bound just on the very summit. Under these circumstances it was necessary to abandon the wagons for a time, and drive the stock (mules) down the mountains ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... who removed to the Western Reserve went there to better themelves; and their children found themselves the owners of broad acres of virgin soil, in place of the stony hill pastures of Berkshire and Litchfield. There was an attraction, too, about the wild, free life of the frontiersman, with all its perils and discomforts. The life of Daniel Boone, the pioneer of Kentucky—that "dark and bloody ground"—is a genuine romance. Hardly less picturesque was the old river life of the Ohio boatmen, before the coming of steam ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... away down in Mexico. We were prisoners together in the submarine dungeon of San Juan de Ulua. I'd never have escaped without him. And I'd never have escaped a lot more things without him, either. Then we met the Panther. He's the greatest frontiersman in all the southwest, and we three somehow have become ...
— The Texan Scouts - A Story of the Alamo and Goliad • Joseph A. Altsheler
... been already shown, in case he attempted to make his way, he would be placed at the greatest disadvantage possible, especially as his own mustang was still a good hundred miles to the southwest, if he had succeeded in avoiding capture up to that time. But the life of a frontiersman, besides being perilous at all times, is hardly ever anything but disagreeable, despite the curious fascination which it holds for those who follow it. Tom did not hesitate a moment longer than was necessary, now that a disagreeable expedient ...
— Through Apache Lands • R. H. Jayne
... the lower landing, some three or four days after the events last recounted, Mr. Joseph Meek, an old frontiersman and guide for emigrant trains through the mountains, came down from the Dalles, on his way to Vancouver, and stopped at my camp to inquire if an Indian named Spencer and his family had passed down to Vancouver since my arrival at the Cascades. Spencer, the ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... gradually her friendliness, hominess, and sincerity broke down these preconceptions. Kansas soon respected this tall slender energetic woman who, as she overrode obstacles, showed a spirit akin to that of the frontiersman. ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... Not a move, Murphy! I have the drop!" The voice was low, but stern, and the old frontiersman obeyed mechanically, although his seamed face ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... of 1807, Big White set out on his return to the Mandan country. The promised escort, comprising twenty men under the command of Captain Ezekiel Williams, a noted frontiersman, left St. Louis to guard him and to explore the region of ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... very fond of hunting, he was the happiest of men. A few hours' labor threw up a rude hut which was all the home he desired. His rifle furnished him with food, and with the skins of animals for bed and bedding. Every frontiersman knew how to dress the skin of deer for moccasins and other garments. With a sharpened stick he punched holes through the rank sod, and planted corn, in soil so rich that it would return him ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott
... was glad when the old frontiersman changed the subject and began to talk of the settling of that country by the Spaniards, the legends of lost gold-mines handed down to the Mexicans, and strange stories of heroism and mystery and religion. The Mexicans had not advanced much in spite of the spread of civilization ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... our guide—a life-long frontiersman, an old man "beated and chopped with tanned antiquity." He had at one time been ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... more striking, is familiar to every frontiersman. For some reason, the gaucho horse manifests the greatest terror at an Indian invasion. No doubt his fear is, in part at any rate, an associate feeling, the coming of the Indians being always a time of excitement and com-motion, sweeping like a great wave over the country; houses ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... of the Lincoln family in Illinois, they had the few tools which would be considered almost necessary to every frontiersman: namely, a common ax, broad-ax, hand-saw, whip-saw. The mauls and wedges were of wood and were made by each workman for himself. To this stock of tools may also be added a small supply of nails brought from Indiana, for at that period ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... The frontiersman never despairs; and, although it was difficult to figure out the basis of much hope in the present case, yet Sut held on, and determined to do so to the end. He made several cautious tests of his bonds, but the lariat of buffalo-hide ...
— The Cave in the Mountain • Lieut. R. H. Jayne
... an architectural blueprint for restoring an 18th Century home, including grounds of the gentry, planter, or frontiersman. ...
— The Road to Independence: Virginia 1763-1783 • Virginia State Dept. of Education
... inland expeditions ending in disaster and death, could not quench the optimism which the gentlemen adventurers caught from the men of the Renaissance and bequeathed to the colonist, and which for two hundred years the frontiersman has preserved as a priceless ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... past lonely ranches and infrequent stations, by and across shallow streams fringed with cottonwood trees, over the greenish-yellow buffalo grass near the old trail where many a poor emigrant, many a bold frontiersman, many a brave soldier, had laid his bones but ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... atmosphere one can almost see another twisting string of shade, the cottonwoods on the banks of the winding War Bonnet; at least so the Sioux named it, after their gorgeous crown of eagle feathers, but 'twas too polysyllabic, too poetic for the blunt-spoken frontiersman, who long since compromised on Hat Creek. We are in the heart of the Indian country, but the wild romance has fled. We are on dangerous ground, for there, straight away before our eyes, broad, beaten as a race-course, prominent as any public highway, ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... a dog they despise. Both cheat him, but the Englishman kicks him after he has robbed him, or kills him and takes his scalp." He declared that the traders robbed the children of the forest, and that every frontiersman wanted the Indians killed so as to get the land. He had known of Indians being shot in time of peace by trappers, who murdered them for their furs and took their scalps and kept them so as to get bounty on them whenever there should be war with ...
— Rodney, the Ranger - With Daniel Morgan on Trail and Battlefield • John V. Lane
... old pioneer and frontiersman though he was, shuddered as he went to his room. His brother's dark look, and his deadly calmness, ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... marched on Fort Alamo, which had been left in charge of a small garrison of Americans under Colonel Jim Bowie. All night they fought. Every man fell at his post but seven, and these were killed while asking quarter. Here died David Crockett, the famous American frontiersman, whose exploits had made him so popular in Tennessee, that, though unable to read, he was thrice elected to Congress. Joaquin Miller, the American poet, based on this encounter his stirring ballad on ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... Our great poet, Mr. Browning, author of 'Paracelsus,' &c., is enthusiastic in his admiration of the rhythm." Mr. Ingram, after referring to "Lady Geraldine," cleverly points out another source from which Poe may have caught an impulse. In 1843, Albert Pike, the half-Greek, half-frontiersman, poet of Arkansas, had printed in "The New Mirror," for which Poe then was writing, some verses entitled "Isadore," but since revised by the author and called "The Widowed Heart." I select from Mr. Pike's revision the following ...
— The Raven • Edgar Allan Poe
... frequently make traveling shows the scapegoat for their misdoings. We propose to have our show efficiently and honestly policed, to give the people the worth of their money, and to give an entertainment that will show the frontiersman of my early ...
— The Story of Cole Younger, by Himself • Cole Younger
... up went the heavy bar, and as the door was opened to the width of a foot, the figure of a tall, heavily bearded frontiersman slipped into the cabin. He helped hold the door ...
— For the Liberty of Texas • Edward Stratemeyer
... established and has become traditional, its pioneers become heroic and poetic. The Norman robber is then discovered to be a kind of blue-blooded gentleman, or at least the sturdy, aboriginal father of gentlemen. The rough and half-savage Boone is the ideal frontiersman, with a smack of Arden and the sylvan realm. And as for the coarse-toothed harrow—as my Lady Cavaliere sits upon the porch and sees the peacock unfolding his glory upon the soft, thick sward, do you see that my ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... poverty, the rude lumberman, the hardy frontiersman, was by nature a poet and a seer, and this was his new birth into his true inheritance. Those eyes which had never wept, swam in tears. Those knees which had never trembled before the visible, shook in the presence ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... handsome face, and short, brown, curly hair. His eyes were very large and blue, with that steely look in them which snaps like lightning when any thing strikes fire from the heart. He was very tall and straight, and had a lofty carriage and an air of command. His dress was that of an ordinary frontiersman, and he wore no arms of any kind, yet any one would have said, with the invincible assurance of a sudden presentiment, "The man ...
— The Hallam Succession • Amelia Edith Barr
... discount the claims of scouts, as they will occasionally exaggerate; and when I found one who said nothing about himself, I did not think much of him, till I had proved him. He is a natural gentleman in his manners as well as in character, and has none of the roughness of the typical frontiersman. He can take his own part when required, but I have never heard of his using a knife or a pistol, or engaging in a quarrel where it could be avoided. His personal strength and activity are such that he can hardly meet a man whom he cannot handle, and his temper and disposition ...
— The Life of Hon. William F. Cody - Known as Buffalo Bill The Famous Hunter, Scout and Guide • William F. Cody
... waters gurgled and oozed in the reeds but a few feet from him. The sun sank, deepening the gold of the river until it might have been the stream of Pactolus itself. But Martin Morse had no imagination; he was not even a gold-seeker; he had simply obeyed the roving instincts of the frontiersman in coming hither. The land was virgin and unoccupied; it was his; he was alone. These questions settled, he smoked his pipe with less concern over his three thousand miles' transference of habitation than the man of cities who had moved into a next street. ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte |
